Every so often during my exploration of the aural soundscape, I find interesting albums. Usually they are collaborations of some artist I like or a member of a band I like getting together with another band or artist that I like.
This is an example find.
Steve Hillage, formerly of Gong, plays guitar along side Evan “Bluetech” Marc, a chap who has made a living out of playing records at people. Of course such a collaboration is either going to be mind-blowing or a pile of steaming manure.
I guess my aural rhubarb is going to be bountiful.
Peter Namlook has appeared on the Music Project before. You might recall how I wrote about how basic and hellish his work sounded. Well, Dreamfish is no exception. Even with the assistance of a chap called Mixmaster Morris.
Anyone that calls themselves “Mixmaster” is obviously overconfident in their abilities. It’s like if I went round Banbury or Daventry calling myself Blogmaster Gnomepants or Spreadsheetwizard Stegzy; I’d end up facing ridicule, embarrassment and probably have to hide myself away. It’s clear here that what ever “mixing” Mr Morris does, it’s probably with the bag of cement that went to make the recording studio’s floor.
For the purpose of the music project I subjected myself to the full album. By the end of track 2 I was hoping that my iMac would stop working so I had an excuse not to continue listening to the dirge. Well actually, that’s a little unfair because out of the whole album it was track 2 that blended naturally into the ambience of the game of Elite: Dangerous I was playing at the time.
Back in the 80s there was a television programme on BBC2 called No Limits. It featured the young Jenny Powell and some other bloke who hasn’t done owt since, poncing around the UK playing popular music.
There was a section of the show where they played “new” or “interesting” music. Songs such as The Hooter’s Satellite and Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance would be played often as well as other contemporary songs.
One song that featured regularly was Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver. I liked it. Like all the songs I liked at the time, they very rarely got airplay. Usually because they were too old or because I liked them. Even after appearing on the popular film Waynes World, airplay of Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver didn’t increase. So when the free-for-all internet download frenzy of the early to mid noughties was in full swing, I looked for the song and was surprised to see that it was a great deal older than I thought.
Wright released the song on his titular album The Dream Weaver back in 1976, way before Wayne’s World and way before No Limits back in a post-hippy pre-punk time. The album is contemporaneous and the influence of Wright’s friends, Lennon and Harrison, is evident in its floaty-vagina peace-love-man tones. As a result, and with the passage of time and a hint of personal attitudes, this is far-out tosh that probably should be given to a charity shop or thrift store.
Two albums here. Well, two versions of an album with the same name by the same artist.
Imagine, if you will, you are a girl. Imagine going to an all girls school. Now stop imagining hockey sticks being jolly and sneaking around the dormitory trying to outwit the headmistress and think more about being in a school choir.
School choirs are fun, I was in three when I was younger, but what makes them so much more fun is having a great choir master who chooses some good material for you to sing. When I was at school it was more Schubert’s Masses, Faure’s Requiem and Belshazzar’s Feast but these days a more secular approach is taken with popular music being the choice.
I like to think that whatever school the girls in Scala went to was forward thinking enough to employ the Kolancy Brothers as their music teachers and that the Kolancy Brothers are cool dudes with a broad taste in popular music.
Yes, this is a women’s choir from Belgium singing pop songs. Not just ordinary pop songs, pop songs with attitude. RHCP’s Under the Bridge, Depeche Mode‘s Dream On, even Rammstein‘s Engel are given the Scala treatment; kind of the school choir version of Gregorian.
Of course, such material is the stuff of proud new-age grandparents and not that of young people, like me, trying to up their street cred. But such material is popular enough to have had several releases as well as several follow up albums. Dream On in the music project appears as two albums, the official extended 2010 rerelease and the unofficial preview release from 2004 which has mostly the same music on but also some sneaky bootlegs and a couple of reinterpretations of material from their other release On the Rocks.
Sometimes the album title makes the acquisition seem like a good idea.
This is case in point to not judge an album by its cover. It’s truly awful nonsense featuring the “best” of Scandinavia and Europe’s Operatic Metal scene.
Appearing here are Trail of Tears, Evanescence, Avantasia, Leaves’ Eyes, Sirenia and Lacuna Coil. Also joining the cacophony we are subjected to Persephone, After Forever, Tristania, Theatre of Tragedy and a number of other bands before being treated to some Nightwish with their Dark Chest of Wonder.
The band list alone makes it sound like an ideal compilation except for the fact there is no cohesion to the compilation (This is an unofficial compilation anyway so it is more than likely fan generated) and because of that it suffers becoming dirge.
A live recording of Tim Buckley in London in 1968.
Having heard Buckley’s Dolphins and Happy Time at a time when my contemporaries were exploring the joys of Buckley’s contemporaries such as Creedence Clearwater and Airport, I was, of course, going to see what all the fuss was about Tim Buckley.
Drug adulation, tragedy and too much vibraphone, that’s what.
Chris Squire, bass player and founding member of Yes, passed away a few weeks before I began writing this entry. His passing was about to leave a massive uncertainty with the bands future in that how can you possibly fix a giant Chris Squire sized hole in the fabric of the Yes continuum. Then came news that Squire’s colleague and former band mate and Music Project attendee, Billy Sherwood would step up to the plate.
Which is nice.
Drama arrived at an interesting point in Yes’ history. Jon Anderson had left the band to pursue projects with Vangelis. Rick Wakeman had gone too, his goal to add ice skating and twiddly keyboards to everything. That left a huge hole in the band. No singer; No keyboard player. What to do?
It was about this time that the band met producer to be, Trevor Horn and keyboard jedi, Geoff Downes. You might remember Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes from global supergroup and ground shaking behemoths the Buggles. That’s right, the band that brought you Video Killed the Radio Star. In recognising their potential, Chris Squire invited the two to join Yes and fill the shoes of Anderson and Wakeman and history was made.
This is possibly my most favourite Yes album. I really wished that the Drama era Yes line up had produced more music like this. Contrasting between the previous Yes album Tormato and the following 90125 it’s certainly a distinctive sound. Horn struggles to reach the same pitches as Anderson, while Downes seems to lack the fingers to compete with Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman, yet it isn’t a disaster. There are some songs on the album that were many, many years ahead of their time and it certainly shows what sort of geniuses makes up the band.
What we have probably learnt from the music project so far is three fold:
I have a lot of music that is rubbish
I have a lot of music that I “should” like
There is a lot of music that I came late to.
This album highlights the third point.
I came to Curve quite late. I’d never heard of them before 2004 but apparently they had been around for many years. Formed in 1990, the band falls under the Shoegazing, dream pop, alternative rock genres.
It’s the unique sound of Curve I like. The haunting ghostly etheric singing with the wide echoing on the guitar. It reminds me of the out of tune radio one might hear on very late night car journeys. Awesome stuff but I no longer have the lifestyle where I can listen to the same music over and over again without people (bosses/wives/doctors) complaining that important things (work/playing with cats/hearing) are more important than sitting there with headphones on all day.
After the success of the 1990’s biographical film The Doors, interest in The Doors grew. This is clear from the previous entries in the music project featuring the Doors. I watched The Doors starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison at Beanhead’s house while his folks were away. Several of us gathered there and watched the film, some experimented with herbal substances, while others continued dabbling with alcoholic substances.
I will always remember that evening for the enlightenment it brought to me as a youth. How music remains the common key that joins us and how sometimes there are people who, through music, touch us in a special way. Furthermore, I also realised that evening, that I had seen Jim Morrison in a documentary having a plaster cast made of his penis.
These kinds of things linger in the mind. Like a nasty fart in an enclosed room.
Anyway, to celebrate the launch and revived interest in The Doors, the remaining members of The Doors rereleased this, the bands first album, to capitalise on the success of the film. Unfortunately, The Doors provides nothing new. Nothing new will come from The Doors ever. Unless you can reanimate Jim Morrison. Never the less, constant releases of compilations and Best ofs will surely squeeze a tiny little drop of something out of the Jim Morrison bandwagon. Hey, perhaps it’s time to release yet another film about The Doors….We could do with another “best of” about now…
Once again, as previously discussed, the Pixies are only here in my collection because I’ve been told that I “should” like them.
When I said to my self appointed and styled music guru hipster friend that I had obtained the Pixies’ best of compilation, the snort of contempt was akin to a field of hippos.
“You shouldn’t get the best of” he said, “It is a poor reflection of their musical superiority and genius. Instead why not get Doolittle which is the definitive album for those who should like the Pixies.”
So apparently this is the definitive album for those that “should” like the Pixies. Now, as any logic professor will tell you, as I don’t like this album I am not someone who “should” like that band.
I missed Donnie Darko on the cinema. First time I knew of its existence was when I saw it on the shelf in the Rialto News video library on Upper Parliament Street looking unloved.
Watching the film had me transfixed in a way a film hadn’t had me transfixed since Lost Highway. Here was a film that was so intricate that one viewing would not suffice. Several viewings would be needed and so, as it should be, I nipped into HMV and treated myself to a copy of the film on DVD. I went round telling people that this film was one they should watch and digest, a suggestion that was met with the usual dismissive shrug.
Since then, the film had an almost viral spread. Months would pass and the people I suggested the film to would say to me “Hey, have you ever seen Donnie Darko?” excited by the prospect that they may have seen something enlightening that would appeal to me before me. Then people started talking about it in the mainstream press, on the mainstream television, even a song from the soundtrack, the Michael Andrews version of Tears for Fears’ Mad World reached number 1 in the UK.
The film, previously a slightly unknown cult movie, was rereleased to capitalise on its growing success with a Director’s cut. Unfortunately, the directors cut didn’t add anything to the original apart from time. In fact it watered the content down if anything. Made it easier to digest and over explained bits that didn’t need explaining. Then there was the sequel, S.Darko but we don’t talk about that. In fact, let’s not even admit to it existing…
Still, like all good capitalists the owners of the film rights released an extended version of the soundtrack too and today’s album is that very same. The soundtrack features a number of popular contemporary songs from the time in which the film is set interwoven with nice hauntological piano led intermissions. The original soundtrack release featured less of the plinky plonky and focussed more on the atmospherics and contemporary sounds than this version. Still good though.
More Europop, this time with late eighties popsters from Sweden, Roxette.
You might recall Roxette from such hits as Joyride, Listen to Your Heart and Must Have Been Love. I did. I remembered how much I liked their songs and realised, mid noughties, that I had none of their albums. So with copious amounts of internet to consume, I set about downloading their Best of compilation and this is it.
All their hits from 1988 through to 1995 are here including those already mentioned, The Look and Dressed for Success. Re-listening to the album for the purpose of the music project just kept shoving me into a mental Delorian back to my youth in the late eighties and early nineties.
German new wave rock star Joachim Witt emerged onto the world stage roughly around the same time as Falco but it wasn’t until the nineties when his hit Die Flutt was rereleased as a duet with Peter Heppner that his international recognition was ignited.
Witt has appeared on the Music Project once before with his best of compilation album Auf Ewig and his eighth album Bayreuth 1 and I’ve already hinted that the only reason I had any of these albums was because of Die Flutt. But DOM is included in the collection purely because of the song Gloria which I came across when trying to find one of Witt’s music videos.
Sadly, this is the last time Witt appears in the Music Project on his own, later appearances are purely due to his inclusion in compilations. While Eurorock continues to run a vein through the mine of my music collection with German and Austrian artists appearing like nuggets of growly goodness, the genre and style which Witt is a part of is certainly one I would like to explore further. But here is the other song I like by Witt a cover version of the song Battalion d’Amour by East German band Silly.
I have to admit that when I started writing the music project, British Sea Power were a band I’d heard snippet of and thought pretty much “Meh”. However, during that time and following the amazing film From the Land to the Sea Beyond I’m a convert. I can hear what they are trying to convey and I totally “get” them.
Even if how I “get” them differs from how they, the band, want people to “get” them. Aurally, to me at least, they are the orange rust smeared metal columns sticking out of the disturbed North Sea of British noughties music and are awesome at doing it too.
We’ve met British Sea Power before on the music project, with their debut The Decline of British Sea Power. However, Do You Like Rock Music? is totally a great starting place for someone coming fresh to the band, indeed, many of the tracks on the album reappear in the film From the Land to the Sea Beyond. British Sea Power might not be everyone’s choice of sound but if you like your music salt encrusted and flavoured with centuries of coastal industry and deprivation, then I suggest you give them a try.
Thanks to Steelrattus for looking after the shop while I had a holiday. It’s always fun to see read other people’s insights into the music in my collection and, as long term readers will testify, there has been rather a lot up to this point and there is far much more to follow. The Music Project is a labour of love, one which I do for fun and it’s a great opportunity and fun challenge for writers to dip into. Which is why new writers are always welcome here.
Mostly though I do it myself. Doing it yourself was pretty much the buzz of the nineties. On the back of the likes of Ground Force and DIY SOS, the popularity of nipping down to B&Q at the weekend for a bag of nails and some 2-b-4 grew. Sadly so did the popularity of the Seahorses through the use of the term Do It Yourself in this, their first album. Continuity has never been my strong point.
Anyway, I’d never heard of the Seahorses.
So imagine my surprise when a the happy age of midtwentysomething a senior work colleague who I happen to have said good morning to while passing in the corridor everyday for several years returned the greeting to me one morning with a copy of this CD thrust into the palm of my hands.
“You SHOULD like this” he said, “It’s right up your street”.
How the jiggery Thomas he could conclude this from a mere, “Hi!” or cheery “Morning!” as we passed in the dusty corridors of St Annes house in Bootle, I have no idea. None the less, it sat for years more on my book shelf through 3 house moves before being ripped and placed into the box marked “Music Magpie“.
Shortly before the fourth house move, my then wife discovered it and exclaimed how much joy the band brought her and then proceeded to play it most days on her car stereo, come home from work whistling or singing the songs and generally liking the album altogether.
Personally, I couldn’t stand it. Sure it has all the elements of “indie” nineties and screams Oasis and Shine but there’s nothing unique about the sound.
Still, it’s still in my collection. I still have no idea why and the only time I’ve listened to it in its entirety was for the purpose of this music project. It now resides in a folder labeled “Recycling Bin”.
Steelrattus here again, with the last of my guest posts in this seven day run. And a great album to finish on, coincidentally, for me at least.
The Division Bell is the second of the two albums that I actually know quite well, or at least I’ve listened to it a lot. It’s another album that dates back to my time at university, Surrey University to be specific. <Anecdote>Along with the aforementioned wonderful UniversityRichard™ who introduced me to lots of music, I had another friend called Simon Levy. I will admit I was a bit of a twat towards Simon, to begin with. I felt like Simon was trying to muscle in on the small clique I was a member of, and being of low self esteem I didn’t like it, and didn’t really know better. But despite the frosty start I did eventually warm to Simon. Much like Richard he was a “music pusher”, albeit on a much smaller scale. Simon only pushed me towards two artists, Pink Floyd and Roger Waters. I remember Richard being quite wary of Pink Floyd, specifically The Wall, for which he’d give me a there-be-dragons-here look when I mentioned it. Anyway, I consumed the tapes that Simon recorded for me, and enjoyed them. I graduated in 1995, and The Division Bell was released in 1994, so it just crept in prior to the end of my degree.</Anecdote> To this day I remain a definite Pink Floyd and Roger Waters fan, with a caveat. I’ve been lucky enough to see The Wall live, twice, and I now have a much better understanding of Richard’s there-be-dragons-here look; it’s a hard hitting album if you grapple with its story. I also have a debt of thanks to Simon for the introduction, but sadly along with being an idiot when I first met him I was also an idiot and lost touch with him post-university, and have never been able to find him since to at least say, “thanks… and sorry”.
The Division Bell comes from what I describe as third generation Pink Floyd – I’m not sure if these are official designations, but they work for me. I see first generation Floyd as their early 60s psychedelic stuff with Syd Barrett, and that’s where the caveat comes in because I don’t like this era at all. Second generation Floyd I identify with Barrett’s departure, although I don’t think they hit their stride until Dark Side of the Moon. Third generation Floyd follows the departure of Roger Waters in 1985. There have only been three albums post-Waters, of which this is one. The music from this phase can be very… nice, but the albums lack the bite that Waters added to varying degrees, and at times feels they feel positively anaemic. I do enjoy both A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the first of the albums without Waters released in 1987, and The Division Bell, even though they’re both a mixed bag. I even have a karaoke version of Coming to Life, from The Division Bell, but it’s bloody hard to sing.
An interesting fact that I didn’t know is that the album name was suggested by Douglas Adams, apparently over dinner and in return for a donation to his favourite charity. It can’t have required much effort though as it was a lyric from one of the tracks on the album, High Hopes.
Steelrattus here again, with the sixth of my guest posts in this seven day run.
The Ditty Bops is the second of the two albums in these seven days that I don’t know at all. Again I have done the right thing, sat down, and listened to it. First impressions are contemporary bluegrass. Unfortunately this is a bigger problem than the previously reviewed album, as this isn’t my type of music at all. As an aside, of late I’ve started listening to Radio Paradise, and although it’s pretty eclectic it also has too much in the way of both country and western for my tastes. Anyway, the album is a similar sound throughout, albeit a couple of tracks seem slightly more pop-y.
A fact check unearths that this is their first album, released in 2004. They’ve released four albums subsequently, have had their tracks played in TV programmes, and featured on a Bob Dylan album.
Steelrattus here again, with the fifth of my guest posts in this seven day run.
Disraeli Gears is the first of the two albums in these seven days that I don’t know at all. So I have done the right thing, sat down, and listened to it. First impressions of the album are that it’s all very 60s/70s hippy culture. I quite liked the opening track, and the second track was famous enough for me to recognise it, but then it went slowly downhill from there. Part of the problem is that for the last few years I’ve struggled to listen to whole albums unless (a) I really like them and (b) they have some variety. Unfortunately this album doesn’t tick either of those boxes for me.
Checking the facts, the album was indeed released in 1967, hit No. 5 in the UK chart, and was Cream’s US breakthrough. The odd title is a malapropism (what I know as an “eggcorn”) between members of the band talking about a bicycle. They found it so funny they used it as the title. And here’s the famous track.
Steelrattus here again, with the fourth of my guest posts in this seven day run.
Oddly, I’ve already encountered this album twice in the last week. Firstly, it was mentioned in the latest episode of Mr. Robot. Secondly, it features in a bizarre scene in the film Ant-Man. If I were superstitious I’d probably cross myself with a black cat as this is the third time the album has crossed my path this week. But I’m not superstitious, so I shall just marvel at the coinsequences.
Disintegration is one of the two albums in this seven day stint that I am already familiar with. <Anecdote>1989. I was at Sixth Form College, probably my happiest time while being edumacated. Finally I was surrounded by intelligent charismatic peers. The only problem for this historic recounting is that I’m not certain how I ended up buying Disintegration. I do remember that there was a guy in the year above us who I locked onto, from a distance, as a bit of a role model. He was classic-80s-guy, with a chiselled jaw, and blow dried Don Johnson hair. And I remember him wearing Cure t-shirts, which seemed at odds with his look. So it was perhaps due to this guy and curiosity that I ended up buying the CD – yes, I had owned a CD player for 1-2 years at this point, and this must have been one of a few albums that I owned by 1989.</Anecdote>
I still feel much the same when I listen to the album as I did when I first listened to it all those years ago, and was blown away by the sound. The album opens with the epic and strident Plainsong, with its rumbling powerful sound. This then launches into the heartbreak of Pictures of You, which became a “favourite” breakup song of mine. There are echoes of Plainsong in Closedown, another dark powerful song. This is followed by the much more upbeat Love Song – yes it is, listen to the lyrics – although The Cure somehow still seem to make love sound mournful. Then seemingly back to darkness again with the much more abstract Last Dance. This is followed by the most famous of the tracks on the album, and arguably The Cure’s career, Lullaby, which is more abstract again, and clearly not drug influenced. For me at this point the tracks begin to blend a bit, with the dark sound of Fascination Street, Prayers for Rain, The Same Deep Water as You, Disintegration, Homesick, and finally the close out track Untitled. This is not to belittle these tracks, they are all excellent, but just don’t stick as individually in my mind as those that are earlier on the album. They almost feel like a themed B-side, although I’m not sure offhand whether they would have been the literal B-side to the album.
As a sufferer of depression, Disintegration feels like the quintessential depression album… my quintessential depression album at least. I can’t think of an album that oozes depressive feelings quite like this album, and I have to be careful listening to too much of it, particularly the latter half as it can crash my mood. It’s no surprise that Robert Smith, the lead singer, lyricist, and co-producer, was suffering from depression and a crisis-of-age at the time the album was written. This aside from problems within the band. Despite this though I feel the album is a work of genius from a band that was at its peak.
Steelrattus here again, with the third of my guest posts in this seven day run.
Mike Oldfield. I first got into Mike Oldfield at university, courtesy of the previously mentioned UniversityRichard™. It was Oldfield’s original sound which hooked me, along with the other bands that Richard introduced me to. I must have heard the titular track from Tubular Bells prior to this time, but finally I heard the entire album, and many more such as Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, Five Miles Out, Crises, and the wonderfully nutty Amarok. While at university in the early to mid 90s Tubular Bells 2 and The Songs of Distant Earth were released. And that was pretty much where my relationship with Mike Oldfield ended. I have listened to some of what he has produced subsequently, but none of it has hooked me like the earlier albums.
Discovery is another of these odd albums which somehow I’ve managed to miss in the chronology, as it was released after Crises in 1984. I’m guessing though that the reason I’ve not heard it is because it’s not very good. Curiously the biographical section of Mr. Oldfield’s Wikipedia entry, presumably curated by one or more dedicated fans, doesn’t mention it at all. Does this also suggest that generally it’s not viewed very favourably? There is a short dedicated page for the album though which tells us it was recorded as a follow up to the very successful single Moonlight Shadow, from the Crises album. To that end, and unusually for Mr. Oldfield, most of the album is comprised of short songs that were presumably intended for the pop market, and a lot of the songs feel like variations on the Moonlight Shadow theme. The only exception is The Lake, the final track, which is a distinct instrumental that is three times the length of the other tracks on the album, and for me at least the stand out track. Oldfield has said this final track was inspired by Lake Geneva, as he recorded the album in Switzerland (he was living there for tax reasons), and could see the lake from his recording studio.
Me again. Here I am with the second of my guest posts, in this seven day run.
ELO. I have an odd relationship with ELO. <Anecdote> In the early eighties, when I was on the cusp of being a teenager, my Mum was an Assistant Librarian. This meant I visited the library a lot, and along with reading a lot of books, it also meant I got to borrow cassettes (and later CDs) for free! In turn this meant I got the chance to experiment with a lot of music without paying a bean – if I liked the cover of an album I’d borrow it. I suppose it was a bit like the music subscription services of more recent times. Anyway, one of these experimental albums was by ELO. Not the titular album I’m afraid, another album called Secret Messages. I was smitten by it, with its weird blend of multitrack vocal, orchestra, and original sound. It’s one of those albums that will forever be burned in my memory. For good or for bad it’s also forever associated in my mind with the Moomin books, which I was reading a lot of at the time. Anyway, getting back to the odd relationship bit. You would have thought that my love of the album would have lead me to listen to more ELO, but oddly it didn’t. The exact reason why is lost in the mists of my faltering memory, perhaps there weren’t any more ELO albums at the library, I wasn’t open-minded enough, or just didn’t think of it. </Anecdote>
Anyway, to present day, and it’s quite an odd thing breaking my second-ELO-album virginity. Discovery goes through all the right motions. It sounds a lot like Secret Messages and does a good job of treading that fine line between not being a copy, yet not being too different to confuse the listener. Yet it does nothing for me. Perhaps it’s too similar. Or I need to listen to it again. Music is a fickle beast. *shrugs*
For fact fans, it transpires that Discovery actually pre-dates Secret Messages by 4 years, with the former released in 1979, and the latter in 1983. Discovery was ELO’s first number one album in the UK. Oddly Wikipedia doesn’t give much if any information about how the album came together.
Here’s the opening track. Make your own mind up, if you’ve not heard it before.
Hello again. It’s Steelrattus here with the first of seven consecutive guest posts. This time around I am helping Stegzy out for a whole week, so I have essentially got whatever seven albums are scheduled for this week. So this is why I’m utterly blameless for the first of these posts.
The Dirty Dancing soundtrack. I’m not sure I have ever seen the film. In fact my only real memory of the film is my sister being a huge fan back when it must have been at the cinema in 1987, and subsequently home cinema. But in the interests of… science (and blogging) I have forced myself to listen to the soundtrack. For review purposes I appear to have the 20th Anniversary Edition of the soundtrack, which is twenty seven tracks versus the 1987 original edition’s twelve, to add insult to injury. So the beers that Stegzy owes me have just increased I feel. By an order of magnitude.
The soundtrack itself appears to be a mix of 1950/60s rock and roll, reflecting the 60s setting of the film, and 80s power ballads. I don’t mind the 1950/60s tracks so much, but the 80s stuff doesn’t do so much for me. Listening to the album it all tends to bleed together. And that’s about all I’ve got to say about the music.
For fact fans, apparently the original 1987 soundtrack was a huge success, sold 32 million copies worldwide, and is one of the best-selling albums of all time, proving there is no God. Apparently it spent 18 weeks at number one in the US Billboard chart. Its performance spawned a follow-up called More Dirty Dancing in 1988. Ultimate Dirty Dancing was released in and contains every song in the order played in the film (great for OCD nuts like me… well it would be if I would ever listen to it. Which I won’t. Ever). It transpires that the version I’ve listened to, the 20th Anniversary Edition (unsurprisingly released in 2007), contains remastered and additional tracks in a different order. *shrugs*
Anywhere, here’s the obligatory YouTube video, of what is presumably the most popular track.
Another band I was told I “should” like but don’t. Frankly, I think the only reason I have such a John Peelesque collection of digital music is because people tell me that I “should” like something.
Northern folk rock referencing the experiences of a generation now approaching middle age.
Different Class is the album which most people identify with the band. Gritty cutting social commentary enhanced by Cocker’s unique singing style. Many of the tracks appear on a variety of soundtracks of the time.
Even though I lived in Sheffield at the height of their popularity and I met Jarvis when he popped into the Halfords I worked in, at the time I didn’t like them, but persistent gnawing at my ears and gradual realisation of the talent behind the music arose to change that perception and sentiment.
Every so often during my exploration of the aural soundscape, I find interesting albums. Usually they are collaborations of some artist I like or a member of a band I like getting together with another band or artist that I like.
The Division Bell – Pink Floyd
The Ditty Bops – The Ditty Bops
Disraeli Gears – Cream
Disintegration – The Cure
Discovery – Mike Oldfield
Discovery – ELO
Dirty Dancing – OST
Stegzy's Music Project 